


he’ll keep her like an oath

by pseudofaux



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, Implied Torture, Implied Violence, Pining, They’re not together but tagging it so people looking for the content can find it, but make it brooding and sexy, unrequited (?) love, use your words Hubert I believe in you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-22 22:13:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21309448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pseudofaux/pseuds/pseudofaux
Summary: Not her, theideaof her, that’s what he loves.(Hubert grits his teeth and pines in his own fashion.)
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42





	he’ll keep her like an oath

**Author's Note:**

> Hubert’s support with the player unit where he talks about being birds soaring near black eagles about had me dumb crying because: soft?!??! poetic?!!?! sad???!!?? I liked him right away and loved the way Crimson Flower proved he isn’t a bastard. Or at least that he uses his powers of bastard selectively (sorry, Ferdinand, I love you, too). All that made for this! I hope you’ll enjoy it.

He’s stooped to every reasonable depth for her, and would fling himself into unreasonableness if the future called for it. He doesn’t think Edelgard knows how much cutting he does in rooms with thick stone walls. She doesn’t need to. The future she is aiming for is beyond blood puddles, that’s the point of it, and to maintain the vision without faltering means she cannot look to her sides or to below. It is her duty, and Hubert has his. His involves a lot of terrorizing people who deserve it, skulking around them while they babble and bribe. And then cutting them to ribbons while they beg for mercy they do not deserve and he will not give. 

There’s some madness in him, he knows this. What he does isn’t unjust, but the savagery of it couldn’t come from a whole mind. He satisfies himself by never being crueler than sarcasm to those who are not cruel themselves. And he thinks he is actually gentle—he tries to be— with the skittish ones. More of his magic is retaliatory, defensive for his allies, than people realize. No one has cottoned on to the fact that he eats meat only when served, likely because he has cultivated impressions to the contrary.   
  
A future beyond blood puddles will be a wonderful thing. He doesn’t think they can stop violence entirely, of course, but if they can stop the need, most of the puddles will dry up and never refill. The ground is so wet now. The nights are so long and the days—the afternoons, especially— are even longer. 

His backbrain and his shriveled little heart will never allow, even when his cock is heavy in his own hand, for him to think of _her_, he never sees her face, he would never dream of it. He sees a petite woman whose misfortune and limbs and destiny all cast long shadows. His mind tumbles over soft brown cruelly leeched until it becomes lonely moon-pale. _That is what happens to soft brown mice_, he thinks, as his back teeth grind and he moves his hand faster through the distaste. It happens to the sweetest mice before any others: hawks pluck them from the field and expose their tiny mouse bones to the air. 

_**Eagles hunt hawks**_, he thinks, pushing the side of his tongue between clamping teeth. He doesn’t know if it is true, but eagles are bigger birds. Sometimes you only need to be bigger. as he gets closer, he meditates on strength and usefulness, and imagines an impenetrable shield of spells around a young woman with a downturned face and an upturned axe.   
  
Not her, the idea of her. He makes his peace with that. It is, after all, what he lives for. 

**Author's Note:**

> They don’t get together here but I cackle over my keyboard/cauldron thinking they DO, eventually. 
> 
> I’m on the bird app as @pseudofauxtome if you’d like to say hi (no pressure!). I’m currently playing Blue Lions pre-timeskip and taking notes for Seteth/Ingrid, Mercedes/Dedue, Mercedes/Sylvain, Dimileth and Dimianne, and... whatever the ship name is for Felix and Bernadetta.


End file.
